Kevin Brock Examines Computer Code as Meaningful Communication

Brock's new book on the rhetoric of code and coding published by University of Michigan
Press

In his new book, Rhetorical Code Studies: Discovering Arguments in and around Code, Kevin Brock explores how software developers construct arguments in the code they write—arguments
that are made up of logical procedures and that make claims regarding how a given
program operates.

Pulling from a range of open source software projects and related industry examples
(from the Mozilla Firefox web browser to small-scale programming job interview questions),
Brock connects ongoing conversations among rhetoricians, technical communicators,
software studies scholars, and programming practitioners. By doing so, Brock demonstrates
how software code and its surrounding discourse are highly rhetorical, as well as
how attention to their rhetorical nature can productively impact each of these fields.

Rhetorical Code Studies is published by the University of Michigan Press, in its Sweetland Digital Rhetoric
Collaborative series.